The messenger brought word to send us to the police office, and there we went.
A binbashi, grave, polite, and curious, invited us to be seated and ordered coffee.

He could speak only Turkish, and I tried English, French, and Italian in vain, when a bright Albanian lieutenant standing by made a remark in Romaic, and for the needs of the case I caught on.

He knew much less Romaic than I, but I could make him understand that I was the correspondent of an English journal going to Scutari, etc., etc.

Gosdanovich played his part well, and was as stolid as an ox, though the conversation, which he understood, between the Mussulman Serbs present was not at all cheering.

"Bah!" said one of the secretaries who sat writing on the mat beside the bimbashi, "I can kill twenty such men as that with a stick, and should like to do it--such rubbish as they are--I should like to send them all to the devil." "So should I," replied the other.